


Guilt

by mmorgan317



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, matt murdock whump, matt whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3881725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmorgan317/pseuds/mmorgan317
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Foggy accidentally hurts Matt, he has some guilt that he has to work through. But little does he know that Matt does as well. Maybe it was just the Catholicism but Matt still feels just as guilty as Foggy; perhaps even more. Matt whump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this idea from a friend on Tumblr. Actually, I got the basic premise for the idea from the friend on Tumblr and then it blossomed into something else entirely on its own. Her idea was that Foggy accidentally hurts Matt and from there it became a piece beyond that and turned into one about resolving past issues and both men feeling like they should atone for something.. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy it.

Foggy didn't know what had woken up but something had. Then he heard it again. Someone was jimmying the window open. It was being done so very quietly but when it was also a sound that was so abnormal to your everyday life, you tended to notice it even in the dead of sleep. The night had been cool out and a breeze of it blew into the apartment, letting him know that whomever had been trying to get in had succeeded.

The shot of adrenaline woke his mind up and Foggy shot out of the bed to head towards the corner of his room where he kept an aluminum bat. He wasn't quiet by any means but then it was his apartment. If whoever was going to break into his apartment the guy was damn well gonna know that he was awake to confront him. His hands wrapped around the grip, his knuckles turning white as they lost their blood, and Foggy did his best not to let it show how much he was shaking. He briefly thought about calling Matt but then he heard the footsteps and all thought seemed to flee from his mind.

For a moment Foggy just stood there listening as whoever it was came closer to his bedroom door. His heart was pounding and it seemed to be the only thing he heard for a while. But then the sound of boots on his hardwood floors broke through and Foggy's hands tightened even more around the bat. The footsteps were uneven, however, and for some reason it caught Foggy's attention. It was almost as though the intruder were hurt but why an injured person would break in to Foggy's apartment, he had no clue.

The second a body filled his doorway, Foggy swung.

The man pivoted at the last minute, almost as though he had heard the bat coming, and it was then that Foggy had gotten a relatively decent look at him. But by then it had been too late to stop and momentum carried the weapon forward, hard, and into his best friend's left forearm. Since the swing had been meant for the head, connecting instead with the arm wasn't a bad compromise. Even so, the fact that he'd just hit his friend with a baseball bat was going to be a stone of guilt that would weigh him down for days to come.

"Jesus!" Foggy cried once reality had caught up with his mind. His heart was racing a million miles a minute and he put a hand to his chest, as though the mere action could calm it. "Matt, what are you doing here?"

"Needed help," the other man muttered through clenched teeth. He held his left arm in his right as he lay on the floor on his side. It almost looked like his body was trying to curl in on itself but Matt was rigidly stopping it. The position looked awkward at best, really.

Foggy didn't understand why Matt needed help but then he saw the blood glistening on his friend's left pant leg, just about mid-thigh. Even in the moonlight Foggy could tell that the wound was still bleeding. Whether it was sluggish, steady, or spotty, that was a mystery, but the fact of the matter was that blood was still seeping out - and no doubt onto Foggy's floor. Great!

Dropping the bat, Foggy ran into the kitchen to grab a towel and then went back into his friend on the floor. "Why didn't you go home or to your friend Claire?" he asked as he applied pressure to the wound.

Matt cried out as the pain registered with his mind but he soon clamped his mouth shut. The muscles in his neck stood out sharply as he clenched his teeth and stifled any more sound. On the exhale he slowly let any breath that he had been holding out and with it any tension he might have been keeping in his muscles. His entire body seemed to relax at once.

"You were closer," Matt finally answered after taking yet another deep breath. His breath was shuddering but at least he didn't seem to be clenching in agony, which for Foggy was a plus. "Foggy, I need you to call her."

He slipped the cell phone into Foggy's hands and then he seemed to completely give in to the pain he was feeling. At first Foggy had thought that he had passed out, and had been selfishly grateful for it, but then he'd peeled off the mask and noticed that Matt's eyes were still open.

Foggy wanted to start apologizing for hitting him with the batt but he decided that now wasn't the right time. For one thing, he was still feeling a bit self-righteous in his decision since Matt had technically broken in, and for another, it was far more important that he get Claire over there to stitch Matt's leg up than Foggy soothing his guilt. And so he called.

 _"Wow, I think you lasted a week before you needed my help,"_ the nurse's voice answered.

Foggy had to chuckle at that. Figured Matt would find a girl as cool as her and not be able to keep hold of her. "It's Foggy," he said, letting her know that she wasn't talking to Matt.

There was a sigh on the other end and she said, _"Is he passed out again?"_

"Uh, no, not yet," he answered, looking down at the man on the floor just to make sure. "But he's got a wound on his leg. I don't know how bad it is but he told me to call you and so here we are."

 _"Have you applied pressure to the wound?"_ she asked. There was the faint sound of movement where he assumed that she was gathering her supplies and he couldn't help but breathe out a sigh of relief. _"Can you try to find out how deep it is?"_

Letting his brain catch up with the request, Foggy jerkily stood up and turned on a light. His eyes revolted at the brightness and closed on him and he let them have a few seconds before he forced them back open and made them adjust to the light. Going back down to his knees, he peeled up the bloody towel to get a better look, hoping against hope that it would be obvious and that he wouldn't have to dig around. The last thing he wanted to do was cause Matt more pain.

"Uh," he said, mainly speaking just to let her know that he hadn't hung up or forgotten about her request. The towel peeled back and blood immediately began to drip down. Thankfully it wasn't a steady stream but it wasn't slow by any means. "I'd say it's about medium."

 _"Medium?"_ she said, a slight laugh in her voice.

"Yeah. You know, it doesn't seem too deep but it's definitely deep enough to need stitches." His fingers slipped as they became covered in blood and he pressed too hard on the wound. Matt cried out again and Foggy instantly withdrew his touch, replacing the towel and letting it soak up the blood rather than his skin. "Sorry," he said on a wince.

_"What happened?"_

"My fingers slipped," Foggy explained, oddly pleased to hear the concern in the nurse's voice. "Pressed a little too hard."

_"Okay, look, until I get there, do nothing other than try to slow the bleeding. Think you can handle that?"_

"I'm not a complete idiot," he retorted feeling annoyed that she was being a little condescending towards him. "I already have a towel on the wound to slow the bleeding."

_"Good. Well, just keep it there and I'll be there in about twenty minutes."_

"Okay. Wait!" Foggy called just as she was about to hang up. "We're not at Matt's place."

_"Where are you then?"_

"Mine." He gave her the address and was pleased to note that it was closer to her than Matt's was and so she was only going to take five minutes rather than the twenty she had anticipated. He hung up with her and tossed the phone aside. It landed on the floor, seemingly to bounce a time or two before sliding away and under the bedside table. He looked up at his friend's face, and upon seeing that he was still awake, asked, "How you doing, buddy?"

"Been better," Matt answered through tightly ground teeth. Whereas Foggy had thought that Matt had relaxed somewhat, it was more forced than he had believed. Evidently his friend was still in a lot of pain and he was just stubbornly refusing to show it. "Claire on her way?"

"Yeah, uh, she said she'd be here in a few minutes."

Foggy sat on the floor, fidgeting. He felt as though he should be doing something productive with his hands but he didn't know what. Since the leg wound didn't seem that bad, he didn't think that he should be applying pressure to it but at the same time he didn't want to go near the arm. While Matt had seemed to relax his grip somewhat, he was still holding on to it and the stone of guilt had fully settled uncomfortably in his stomach. He felt that if he tried to do anything to help with that particular injury and he only ended up causing more pain, that the stone would get heavier and that he would, actually, be sick.

So instead, he kneeled on the floor, doing his best to ignore the tinge of red on his hands.

"Relax, Foggy," Matt said, interrupting Foggy's internal debates. "I promise I won't bleed out on your floor."

They both gave a laugh but as Matt's was cut short and had been painful sounding, Foggy's eyebrows knit into a unibrow of concern.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" he asked, worried that there were more injuries hidden underneath the Daredevil suit.

"Well my arm's a bit sore but otherwise, I'm fine."

Foggy winced. "Yeah, sorry about that. But to be fair, you were sneaking around in my apartment. How was I to know that you weren't some sort of burglar?"

"What could you possibly have that someone would want to steal, Foggy?" Matt's breath hitched as he gingerly shifted. Relying on his stubbornness, he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position which Foggy wasn't so sure was a good position for him to be in but as it had to be more comfortable than lying on the hard, wooden floor.

"Uh, I'll have you know that I happen to have a lot of nice items that are worth stealing," Foggy argued, making sure that he sounded a little affronted at the insinuation that he owned nothing of value. "For instance, I happen to have a vintage Nintendo gaming system, circa 1987, as well as a rather newer version of the Xbox, circa 2013."

Matt laughed breathily. "Foggy, no one wants your Nintendo from almost thirty years ago."

"You never know; someone might."

"Barring finding a time traveler who would rather come to the future to steal your specific Nintendo and then go back in time, no one is going to want to steal it."

"That was really elaborately thought out," Foggy commented, half impressed, half curious.

Matt shrugged but didn't provide an explanation. His jaw clenched and his face semi-contorted into a pained expression. The urge to apologize gripped Foggy once again and, just like last time, he stifled it.

They were saved from their thoughts and internal debates by the sound of a knock on his door. Foggy hadn't been aware that he could move that fast but no sooner had Claire finished knocking than he was unlocking the door and letting her in. She was dressed in nothing spectacular. A pair of jeans which ended about mid-calf, a hoodie which looked like it had blood stains already on it and a pair of Keds on her feet. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail and the tinge of red to her nose and tips of her ears suggested that it had gotten colder outside than when Foggy had been out there last. And yet, in spite of all this, Foggy still thought that she looked pretty. How did Matt do it?!

"Where is he?" she asked as she pushed passed him and into the living room.

"Uh, bedroom," he answered, pointing towards the room. No sooner had he answered than she breezed into there. He watched as she knelt down in front of Matt, already slipping on her medical gloves.

"Sorry to call you so late," the blind man apologized by way of greeting. His lips pulled back to bare his teeth as he grimaced. Clair had already begun to attempt seeing how bad the cut on his leg was and she didn't appear to be trying to be anywhere near as gentle as Foggy had done.

"Well it wouldn't be a late Sunday night if you weren't bleeding and in need of medical care," she quipped. As she sat back on her heels, she wiped her forehead with the underside of her forearm. She looked over at Foggy, evidently wanting his opinion now. "Okay, we need to move him somewhere that's not the floor. Would you prefer him on the couch? Or the bed, since it's closer?"

"The couch," Foggy immediately answered. "Sorry buddy but of all the people I imagined in my bed, you weren't one of them."

Matt breathily laughed again and then grimaced. "Fair enough," he granted. "Help me up."

"Uh, no," Claire objected. "Look, I can't tell how deep that cut is and until I can, we don't need you trying to walk around on the leg and potentially making things worse. Foggy and I can get you over there. We've done it before."

"Yeah, except last time he was unconscious. This time he's not and it's considerably more awkward to do it when he's awake," Foggy interjected. It wasn't that he disagreed with Claire's assessment. God knows that he didn't want Matt to make any injury worse. But he also knew just how discomforting it would be for his blind friend to be carried. To be moved from one unfamiliar place to another was always unnerving, especially when you couldn't see what was going on around you.

"And I get that but there's no choice in this," Claire argued, clearing believing that Foggy didn't agree with her.

"In case you haven't noticed, Foggy, Claire isn't the type of person you can argue against," Matt said from the floor. He smiled to show his friend that he was, essentially, giving his blessing on the situation and then added, "Not when it comes to stuff like this, anyways."

"Fair enough," Foggy gave in, holding his hands up in the air in surrender. "Let me put down a blanket first though, cause I really don't want blood on my couch."

The two seemed content to wait on the floor while he did that and they said nothing the entire time. Foggy assumed that Clair was examining Matt but as he had his back to them, he couldn't be entirely sure. He chose a blanket that he didn't care about so that when Matt bled on it (and he would), he could simply throw the thing away rather than try and get it out.

"Okay," he said when he'd finished. He walked back over to the entryway between his bedroom and his living room and looked over at Claire. "We ready?"

"Yeah," she said, peeling off the gloves and stuffing them into her pocket. "You grab his torso, I'll do his legs."

"Get ready buddy," Foggy said as he bent down to wrap his arms around Matt's upper body. "This probably isn't going to feel good."

"Ah!" Matt cried out as he was lifted off the floor and Foggy felt his the muscles in his arms and back tense as pain wracked his body. It wasn't easy carrying Matt the short distance to the couch. Not only was he heavier than he looked, but they were both doing their best to be as gentle as possible with the injuries they knew existed and since their current positioning pulled on one of said injuries, the task was made extra hard on their part and painful on Matt's.

Between the two of them, however, they got Matt to the couch as quickly as they could and gently lowered him onto it. Foggy stood awkwardly off to the side as Claire began to unstrap and unbuckle the Daredevil ensemble, making it easier for her to examine the injuries that Matt had as well as make sure he didn't have others that he hadn't told them about.

When he finally realized that she was about to take Matt's pants off he excused himself. "Okay, I'm gonna go re-lock my window and um, you know, other stuff, while you do your thing," he said. "Let me know when you have him re-clothed and I'll come back."

"Thanks Foggy," Matt said, though what he was, specifically, thankful for, Foggy couldn't guess.

He just nodded as an answer. "Next time could you try just knocking?" he asked. "I'd really like to not hit you with a bat."

Matt laughed. "I'll work on it," he promised, though Foggy knew that he would no doubt stick to the window if he was in his Daredevil suit.

Foggy looked over at Claire and said, "Let me know if you need me."

"I will," she assured and then Foggy turned to go keep himself busy while the nurse undressed his best friend in his living room.

* * *

 

"How did this happen again?" Claire asked as she examined the deep cut more closely. Now that she knew she wasn't going to hurt him as badly (she'd given him a local), she was digging freely around the cut, trying to see just how deep it went. The new suit of his seemed to have stopped the weapon from going too far into his leg but the cut was still pretty decent.

"A Serbian took offense to the fact that I'd dumped his illegal weapons into the Hudson."

The casual way in which Matt had answered gave Claire a moment of concern. Then she remembered who, exactly, she was dealing with and then she brushed it off. Since he had done far worse in the previous year, tossing a bunch of guns into the river didn't actually seem all that bad for him. Actually, now that she thought about it, it seemed quite tame.

"And how did the Serbian fair?" she asked, for once glad that she hadn't been on duty tonight at the hospital. Chances were that if she had been, she would be working on the Serbian rather than patching up Matt.

"He'll have to learn how to handle a gun left-handed for a while but he'll live." Matt hissed, almost cutting off the end of his sentence and Claire withdrew her hands in response. Either the anesthetic was wearing off or she'd gone past where it was working. Which she didn't know but it also didn't matter as she'd gotten her answer while they'd been chatting.

"I see, well, you'll live too, although you'll have to stay off your leg for a day or two." She pulled her bag closer to her and grabbed the suture kit out of it. She'd actually lost count of how many of these she'd gone through since meeting the man that was Matt Murdock. It had to be close to ten, if not more. "The cut isn't as deep as I'd feared but it's deep enough," she informed as she opened the kit and prepared the needle. "I'm going to get it closed and then I'll take a look at your chest and arm."

"My chest is fine," he argued back, actually managing to sound like he meant it. It was a wasted effort as she didn't believe him, but he tried nonetheless.

"Yeah well, I'm still going to check," she answered as she threaded the needled and then started sewing the wound shut. "What was that Foggy had said about a bat?"

"It's nothing," Matt dismissed, his breath hitching as she tugged on the stitches. The wound was relatively small, suggesting that he had been stabbed with a sharp and non-serrated knife. The fact that the weapon had also evidently been taken cleanly out meant that the tear within Matt's thigh muscle wasn't too wide and would, in time, heal on its own. How long it took, however, was up to Matt himself as he didn't tend to allow himself time to heal unless he was unconscious. "I managed to scare him earlier, that's all."

"Would this happen to do with the fact that you haven't used your left hand once since I got here?"

She tied off the thread, cut it, and placed it all into the no longer sterile kit. Tearing open a small package, she washed around the wound in an attempt to clean up most of the blood and then placed a gauze pad over it before she wrapped it in a decent amount of gauze. The muscle would appreciate the wrapping and it would hold the pad in place and hopefully keep Matt from tearing it off to feel the wound.

After depositing her gloves and through the entire messy business into the trash she then pushed up his shirt to check out his chest. She'd noticed from the few times that he'd laughed that it had been breathily done and she wanted to make sure that the reason had simply been pain and not injury. She immediately noticed that there were some bruises forming but since she'd seen worse on him, she didn't pay them any attention. Just to make sure, she ran her fingers over each and every rib on both sides and checked to make sure there was no pain, tenderness, or swelling associated with each touch.

Matt smirked as she'd finished. "I told you I was fine," he reminded, although not snarkily.

"Yeah, we'll see about that," she retorted, still harboring doubts. "Now lets see that arm."

Matt dutifully allowed her to take the limb into her own hands and examine it. She was as careful as she could be but he still grimaced at her touch. As the sensitivity seemed to really only be around the wrist that was where she kept her attention, checking to see how far around the area he showed signs of pain and then checking the main area itself. When she didn't feel any telltale signs of a break, she gently laid the arm back down across his chest.

"Okay, well, I don't think it's broken," she said as she sat back on her heels, "but you should definitely go and get it checked out where they can actually do an x-ray."

When Matt didn't respond, she had thought that he was ignoring her for some reason. But then she noticed the way he had cocked his head to the side so that his left ear was out more and thus closer to his left wrist. His right hand clumsily snaked around so that his fingers were gently dancing on his injured wrist. He sucked in a breath and grimaced as he did it but once he was apparently satisfied, he stopped and resumed his normal position.

"It's not broken," he said with a small shake of his head, as though he were answering a question which she hadn't asked with it. "There's a hairline fracture but that's all."

"That's all?" she countered, surprised but not really. "That would be enough for most people."

Again he smirked and she knew what was coming before he even opened his mouth. "I'm not most people," he said anyways, the smirk growing into a grin as he finished.

"You got that right," she mumbled under her breath, knowing that he would hear it. She bent over her bag and pulled out an ACE bandage. "Give me your arm," she ordered as she opened the package and pulled the bandage out. After he had done so, she skillfully wrapped the wrist, making sure that it was snug without cutting off circulation before she attached the velcro-d end. With that done, she looked for a couple pillows but upon finding none she called out, "Foggy!"

The owner of the apartment appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, averting his eyes to the ceiling when he noticed that Matt did not have his pants back on yet. "Yeah?"

"Do you have a pair of sweatpants and a couple of pillows that Matt can use?"

She actually hadn't intended on asking him for the pants but as she didn't really want Matt to wear anything too restricting just yet she figured it would be a good thing to ask for. Besides, she doubted that Matt wanted to remain in his Daredevil suit while he was on Foggy's couch.

As though supporting her thoughts, Matt didn't argue about the borrowed sweatpants idea. In fact, he seemed to be unusually quiet, which bothered her a bit. It was then that she looked down at her patient and noticed that his eyes were closed and his breathing was even. Matt had fallen asleep. She didn't blame him for that. It must be exhausting leading a double life, and she guessed that he didn't sleep much more than four hours a night which wasn't good for him but as she wasn't his mother, she wasn't about to lecture him about it either.

When Foggy came back, she held up a finger to her lips, telling him to be quiet and then looking down at Matt. When he did the same, realization dawned on his face and he became as quiet as he could be. Foggy handed her the pants first and then patiently waited (with his back to her, by the way) while she put them on Matt before he handed her the pillows, one at a time.

The first pillow she slid under Matt's leg, elevating the thigh a little, knowing that it would help with the pain that Matt was bound to feel in the morning. The next pillow she slid in between his arm and his chest, allowing his injured wrist to rest on it. Matt's only response to these ministrations was to keep on sleeping and she let him.

Pushing his hair off his face, Claire let her hand trail down his cheek and ending it at his stubby jaw. At least this time he'd escaped without a bruise to his face, so that was something. She fought the urge to lean down and kiss his lips, feeling that that would be a violation in so many ways and instead settled for kissing his forehead.

She gathered her things, placing what needed to be into the trash, and then threw her bag over her shoulder. "Try to keep him off his leg as much as possible over the next few days," she instructed as she walked towards the door. "Both his wrist and his leg will be sore and aching when he wakes up. Give him a couple of aspirin and some ice for the wrist, and that should help."

Foggy nodded to show that he'd heard. When she'd mentioned the wrist, a look akin to a puppy who had gotten into trouble formed on his face and it was then that she was willing to bet that that was where he'd hit Matt with the baseball bat. Still she didn't push. After all, if someone had broken into her apartment she probably would have come at him with a bat too.

"Thanks for coming, Claire," the blond lawyer said, taking a moment to look over at the sleeping man on the couch before returning his gaze to her. "He can't say it for himself right now, but I'm sure he'll call you in the morning when he can."

Claire smiled at that. "I'm sure he will," she said, knowing from experience that Matt would no doubt leave her a voicemail rather than talk to her directly. "Take care of him, Foggy." She opened the door and was about to walk through it when another thought occurred to her and she stopped. "Oh, and no more bats, okay?"

Foggy chuckled, his face becoming more handsome from the smile, and nodded. "Yeah, I think I can handle that," he promised. He took hold of the door so that he could close and lock it behind her. "Goodnight Claire."

She didn't respond. Didn't say anything. Merely offered a half-smile and then left. Whatever happened next would be between him and Matt. She had done her duty and was no longer needed.

 

**TBC**


	2. Chapter Two

Karen waited until well after ten-thirty a.m. before she truly began to worry. Usually either Foggy or Matt would have called her by now, if not to let her know that they wouldn't be coming then at least to tell her that they'd be late. And yet here she sat at her desk, staring uncomfortably through the window to the conference room at their (hopefully) newest client, impatiently waiting for the phone to ring or someone to walk through the door. She'd placated the client into being patient, offering up everything the office had to offer in order to keep him there, but enough was enough. Neither she nor the client could be patient any longer.

With a definitive grab, she pulled out her phone and harshly tapped on the screen, calling Foggy first. When it went to voicemail, she hung up and tried Matt. When his went to voicemail as well, she tried Foggy again and this time he picked up.

 _"Hello?"_ His voice was rough and he sounded maybe one quarter of the way awake, but at that moment Karen didn't care.

"Where are you guys?" she asked, whispering into the phone while still eyeing the client who was now looking expectantly at her. "You were supposed to be here early so that you could review the latest potential case you guys had."

_"Mph, what time is it?"_

There was the sound of fabric rubbing against the phone and Karen assumed that he had just rolled over in bed with her on the phone. In a way he had finally taken her to bed. And where in the hell had that thought come from?!

"It's almost eleven, your potential new client is already here, and I'm one step away from having to bribe him to stay unless one of you gets your cute little butts in here ASAP."

Okay, so she may be a little stressed out. It was a fair. Since working for Foggy and Matt, there hadn't really been that many paying clients and the ones that they had had barely kept the place open and the three of them in rent, utilities and food. The guy that was sitting rather pompously in the conference room looked like he could afford to pay, and would pay highly, but he refused to discuss anything with her as she wasn't a lawyer, and Karen really didn't want this one getting away.

 _"Crap,"_ was the only, not-so-eloquent answer she received and she assumed that Foggy had just processed what she'd said. He sighed and cleared his throat. _"Put him on the phone, please."_

Satisfied that something was about to be done, Karen put on her best smile, straightened her clothes and then entered the conference room.

"Mr. Nelson for you, sir," she said as she handed the phone over and then pretended to not listen in.

As it was she could only hear half the conversation - the half that was sitting in the room with her, smelling strongly of way too much cologne and stinking of pride. But it was enough for her to get the gist. Foggy had apologized profusely, stating that he was running a little late and citing some, evidently, barely valid reason for being so. He'd promised that if the client would just wait a little longer, that he would be there soon and then they could discuss the case over lunch on the firm.

When the man had handed the phone back to Karen, his expression hadn't changed but, hey, plus side, he also hadn't glowered at her so she went with it.

"Okay, so you and Matt are going to be coming in soon, yeah?" she asked as soon as she'd left the conference room and gone back to her own desk.

_"I'll be in as soon as I can but Matt won't be coming in today."_

Worry began to work its way into Karen's heart but she clamped down on it. "What? Why not? Was it another "car accident"?"

Though she knew that Matt hadn't ever been in a car accident in his life (except for the one that had rendered him blind, of course), she also knew that that was the two lawyers' go-to for a cover-up story. Why they couldn't simply tell her the truth, she didn't know but as she trusted them, she chose to trust their judgement as best she could and leave it be.

Right after Fisk had been put away, she and Matt had tried to have a little something going on. But while it worked, the little secret he kept from her had begun to eat at her and it ultimately had poisoned any relationship they might have had. Actually, things were still a bit awkward between them but they had been getting better. It had just take Karen a while to realize that, while she still loved Matt, it had grown into that of a good friend rather than a lover.

 _"Something like that,"_ Foggy vaguely replied. _"He hurt his leg last night and isn't allowed to do much walking on it today. He might be allowed to come back on Thursday but I don't know yet."_

"Thursday, but that's three days from now. How badly is he hurt?"

As Karen had seen the bruises and scars that had been left on Matt when he'd been in his "car accident" she was more worried than ever about what had happened that would keep him out of the office for most of the week. Even after the incident, he had been coming in. Granted, he'd been moving rather stiffly and looking like every step had hurt but he'd come in. Perhaps it was simply because this time he'd hurt his leg?

_"Look, I'll explain it a bit better when I come in but for now I have to go if I'm going to get there in decent time."_

As Foggy sounded rushed, she didn't argue. She nodded and then realizing that he couldn't see that over the phone she said, "Okay. I'll see you when you get here."

_"Yeah. See you."_

He hung up at the same time she did and so Karen was left to sit in the office and continue to awkwardly not stare at their client.

* * *

 

As Foggy dashed around his apartment like a madman, Matt lay on the couch simply listening to all the commotion. He'd, of course, heard Foggy's phone ring but he hadn't bothered to try and get to it since he figured Foggy would rather Matt not answer his phone. And besides, he knew that Foggy had been told strictly not to let Matt walk around today and he planned on following those instructions - at least until Foggy left. Then all bets were off.

"How late are you?" he asked his friend as said friend threw on a suit.

Matt was grateful for his sensitive hearing as half of what Foggy had answered had been muffled by clothes. As it was, he heard the words clearly. "Let's just say that it's way past get the hell up." He chuckled when he heard that, remembering when Foggy had called him to wake him up.

"Tell Karen that I'll be in late," he said as he sat more upright. God bless Foggy but his furniture just was not comfortable and his back was starting to ache from laying on it.

"No can do, friend. I've already told her that you won't be in until Thursday."

A gust of wind flew by, telling Matt that Foggy had just gone past him which coupled with the sounds in the kitchen suggested that Foggy was hurriedly making coffee and grabbing some breakfast. While the coffee brewed and the toaster cooked, Foggy came back, sliding on his coat and grabbing his keys and phone.

"Foggy I don't need the entire week off," Matt lectured assuredly. While he appreciated where the concern was coming from, it wasn't necessary. He was fine and he could most certainly handle coming in to work.

"It isn't the entire week," Foggy argued from the kitchen where he was pouring his coffee into a travel mug. "It's simply most of it. Nurse McHottie said that you weren't allowed to walk on that leg for the next two to three days and I don't know about you, but I'm not brave enough to defy her. So, you are going to be the good little Catholic that you are and remain stuck on that couch for the foreseeable future."

Matt pivoted uncomfortably. "How about if I at least move into your bed," he said with a small frown.

"As long as I'm not in it, go for it."

"Deal," Matt agreed. He then smiled. "So you gonna tell Karen that you hit me with a baseball bat?"

"God no!" Foggy said. Matt heard his voice hitch a couple notes and his heart race but he didn't say a word. He merely listened. "Do you honestly think that I want her going all "momma bear" on me for something that was your fault? Besides, I highly doubt that you want her here, mother-henning you."

"I'd say it was at least 50/50," Matt countered jokingly. He didn't actually believe that Karen would be upset with Foggy but he didn't want to say it. Whatever that had been happening between him and Karen had ended but they'd both tried to keep Foggy out of the entire mess and Matt wasn't about to drag him into it now. "But no, we wouldn't want Karen coming over here to check on me."

"You know that she cares, right?" Foggy had said, making Matt wonder if his friend knew where his mind had been at. "She may be a little annoying about it, yeah, but she does care."

"I know, Foggy," Matt assured. He nodded to the doorway. "You should go before Karen does come over here just to drag you into work."

"Right. Good point." There was a breath and then he added, "Need anything before I go?"

"No, thanks, I'll be fine," Matt answered on a exhaled chuckle. "I am going to move into your bed, though because your couch sucks!"

"Fair enough. I'll see you when I get back." The front door opened and Foggy stepped half through it, calling, "Call me if you need anything," before it closed behind him.

Matt sighed once he was alone. He wondered if Foggy would remember that he couldn't call his friend because he didn't have his actual phone on him. If all else fails, Foggy probably would figure it out when he wasn't so focused on getting to work and placating their newest potential client. And hopefully by then Matt would be on his way over to his own apartment.

And on that note, Matt should probably check to see how bad the knife wound was. Not that he didn't trust Claire's judgment but sometimes she would prefer he do things that he just couldn't do - like take care of himself when he was injured. Leading a double-life meant that he couldn't afford things like taking time to recuperate. Not unless he wanted people making connections which shouldn't be so easy to make.

Normally he would have checked with his left hand since it was the closest but the faint throb coming from his wrist told him that it wouldn't be a good idea to do that and so he used his dominant hand instead. The positioning was a bit awkward since he had to go across his body but he managed. Unfortunately it was then that he noticed that the wound had been wrapped beyond something that he could undo with one hand, and then redo as the need arose.

Clever, Claire. Clever.

Even so, he felt around the wound, testing for pain level and tenderness. There was pain but it was at a level that he could handle it. The tenderness, that was a different, somewhat more complicated story. The tenderness itself was tied in with the pain - he could handle it with little trouble. But the part that followed up behind it was weakness which was something else entirely. The weakness in the leg would present a problem both in his normal life and in his night life. Depending on how much strength had been affected, Matt might just have to give Daredevil a rest for the moment.

But since he wasn't going to figure out how badly it had been weakened by laying down, Matt decided that it was time to get up and, at the least, walk over to Foggy's bed which was far more comfortable.

Using his abs rather than his arms, Matt sat fully upright and gently lowered his legs down to the floor. It was cold but nothing more than what he was used to at his own place and so he ignored the sensation. Standing was a bit more trouble as he had nothing that he could use to help leverage himself off the couch. Usually he would have simply just used his legs but with one of them hurt, it was made far more difficult. Still, good ol' Murdock stubbornness won out and eventually Matt was able to get himself into a standing position.

Conveniently ignoring how much effort that had taken, he took a step. His leg wobbled dangerously but it did hold his weight. With his teeth bared, Matt painfully made his way across the room, thankful that he'd been to Foggy's often enough to know the layout and not run into any walls. Furniture had been something else entirely, however, and he had run into the arm of a loveseat and tripped over a coffee table before he'd entered the bedroom. He'd have to talk to Foggy about rearranging his furniture when he came back. It just wasn't something you did when you had a blind friend who came over every once in a while.

His limp was exceedingly heavy by the time he'd reached the bed. Streaks of pain shot down his leg with every step that he took on it and he had begun to feel blood slowly start to seep down his thigh about ten steps back - around about the time he'd run into the loveseat. With any luck he hadn't broken his stitches but he couldn't be sure yet.

As he gingerly lowered himself onto the bed, his foot bumped something on the ground. He fiddled with it as he scooted it closer to him and away from the table underneath which is lay. Once it was more in front of him, Matt felt around for it, smiling slightly when he noticed it to be his burner phone. For a moment he debated calling Claire but the thought of the lecture he would no doubt receive from her for moving when she had said not to stopped him before he'd even found the number pads.

For a while Matt simply sat on the side of Foggy's bed, listening to the world around Foggy's apartment. The car horns outside honked as their drivers became more and more annoyed at one another. In spite of the blaring of the noise, it was also calming in its normality for New York and soon Matt moved on. Two floors above he heard a new mother shuffling about in her apartment while her newborn slept peacefully (for the time being) in his nursery. Five blocks away a cop was writing a ticket for an illegally parked car and somewhere in between all that dozens and dozens of heartbeats pounded in his ears.

Normally Matt would be bothered by all of the noise but today, he found it almost soothing. Instead of wanting to block it all out, he simply lay down and allowed it all to sing him to sleep like it was his own private lullaby.

* * *

 

When Foggy hastily walked through the front door of the office, Karen breathed out a sigh of relief. She was beyond tired of being the only one whom the client could glare at. Now he could add Foggy to his list, making it a grand total of two. He looked a little harassed but at least he also looked professional and not nearly as grumpy as she would have felt if she had been in his position. He also looked tired, though, and that had her frowning a bit.

"Hey, you okay?" she asked by way of a greeting as she followed him into his office. She shut the blinds so that the man in the other room didn't simply sit there and stare at them. It gave them a modicum of privacy but only barely as she was sure that he could hear whatever they were saying.

"Yeah," Foggy answered as he set his briefcase down on his desk and pulled out the files that he'd meant to come in and peruse earlier this morning. "Just a long night."

"Yeah, what happened to Matt?" Karen hadn't planned on asking right away. In fact, she'd planned on waiting until after the client had left. But her curiosity and concern had gotten the better of her and she hadn't been able to hold her tongue.

She crossed her arms over her chest as though to defend against any lie her friend would throw her way and waited for him to answer. Foggy stood behind his desk, perusing the papers in his hands, and not responding to her at all. If she hadn't known any better she would have said that he was stalling. But she guessed that it was he was more preoccupied with the man in the other room than he was with the health of his best friend.

That wasn't fair, Karen corrected herself with a small wince that Foggy didn't see. She knew that Foggy cared a lot about Matt, just as Matt cared a lot about him. It was probably more accurate to say that he was currently concerned with keeping Nelson and Murdock running now that he had dealt with the potential problem of Matt's health. At least, she assumed that he had dealt with it already.

"Right," she said when she realized that he didn't have any intention of answering her. "Well, I'll leave you to peruse your files." She backed out slowly, feeling like an intruder more now than she ever had in this building. "Oh, do you want me to tell Mr. Alfano that you'll be in soon or do you want me to give you some time to look over the case?"

It took a while before Foggy looked up at her and when he did, he still looked half awake; like he was only partly paying attention to anything she'd said. He blinked, his eyes remaining closed a little longer than was normal for him, and then he blinked again, this time making sure to reopen them much quicker.

"Uh, yeah," he said somewhat absently. "Go ahead and let him know that I'll be with him in a minute."

"Okay." She closed the door behind her and then went into the conference room. "Mr. Nelson will be with you shortly," she informed with the sweetest smile on her face as she could muster. "Is there anything I can get you until then?"

Mr. Alfano, a very tall, dark-haired, mochaccino-colored skinned, and dark-eyed man, looked her up and down like she was a piece of meat that he wanted to eat. His eyes roamed over her like he was trying to decide where he would start if he ever got the chance and while she normally found this sort of attention creepy, she had to admit that he was good-looking enough just to make it not unpleasant. It was too bad that he'd showed tendencies towards being an ass, otherwise he might have actually had a slim chance with her.

The client smiled at her. The expression seemed to warm his cold features. It brightened his eyes so that they burned chocolate rather than granite and there was a crinkle in the corner of them that showed that he was, for some reason, truly pleased. His teeth were, expectedly, white and straight, and his lips looked pretty darn chewable.

Okay, Karen thought, appalled at herself. I have got to get out of this room before something happens. Not that anything would happen. She was a professional after all, but stranger things than a client asking her for a date had been known to happen.

It was at that moment, before Mr. Alfano had had a chance to answer her question, that Foggy entered and Karen breathed yet another sigh of relief.

"Sorry I'm late Mr. Alfano," Foggy said, completely unaware of any tension - sexual or otherwise - in the room. "My partner had an accident this morning and he doesn't have any family in town so I'm his emergency contact."

Mr. Alfano frowned, but only marginally. "I do hope Mr. Murdock is alright," he said in a slightly accented voice.

"Yeah, he'll be fine," Foggy said almost dismissively. He sat down across from the other man and opened the files. Before he started talking he looked up at Karen and smiled at her. "Why don't you go ahead and take your lunch? You've earned a long one."

She smiled at him and nodded her head in assent. But since she wasn't really all that hungry she didn't really want to go eat lunch. She did, however, want to get out of the office and so she did as Foggy had suggested and left.

The cool October air greeted her, cooling her down even though she hadn't realized that she had felt warm in the least. She'd instantly turned to head in the direction of Matt's apartment but on some unexplained instinct, she instead pivoted and turned in the opposite direction, towards Foggy's.

* * *

 

The elevator was old and smelly but that wasn't what had Claire making a face. It was the fact that she was in it at all, riding up to Foggy's apartment because, once again, Matt needed help. She had barely been up for an hour and had showered when he'd called. He had sounded sleepy but otherwise okay, if not a bit hesitant. When he had said that he needed her to come and check the knife wound, Claire had begun to yell at him in Spanish. When he'd laughed and started responding, she'd stopped since he'd known exactly what she was saying and it hadn't been nearly as fun to yell at him in another language if he could understand it.

When the doors opened, she put as much of her frustration into each and every step as she could. Since she was here to attend to Matt, medically, she didn't think it was the best idea to go in angry. Chances are, she would take it out on him and end up hurting him which just wasn't something wanted to do. She was a nurse, after all; she was supposed to heal, not hurt.

She knocked once on the door and then she opened it. Matt had said that Foggy hadn't locked it and so she'd known that she would be able to get in without trouble. The knock had merely been a formality to let him know that she was coming in, although she was sure that he already knew of her arrival.

"Matt?" she called as she shut the door behind her. She looked towards the couch and upon finding it empty moved in towards the bedroom.

There Matt lay, looking asleep and dead to the world. He was sprawled across the bed on his back and surrounded by a mound of pillows. Clearly, Foggy enjoyed sleeping with many and many pillows. She couldn't fault him for that but it was odd for a man to do it. She chuckled because he looked so damn adorable and he seemed to stir at the sound of it.

"Claire?" he asked, sounding barely awake as well as unsure. Claire even thought that she'd heard a bit of fear in it as well but she wasn't sure about that one. Even if she had, she couldn't blame him for it. He was in an unfamiliar place and he was half asleep. Even she didn't immediately recognize people in those circumstances and she could see them.

"Yeah, it's me," she confirmed, coming into the room and sitting down on the bed by his right hip. "You call and I come."

"I'm sorry that I interrupted your day off." His voice was rough from disuse and it, if possible, made him sound sexier. He made to sit up and gave a small cry when he applied some weight to his wrist.

"Yeah, you might want to avoid doing that in the near future," she reminded him with a wince on her face. Hearing Matt in pain was hard for her; always.

Pain in general wasn't hard for her to handle (other people's pain, that is. Her own pain was another matter entirely). She worked in an ER, after all. If she wasn't able to handle the sounds and sights of other people's pain, she was in the wrong line of work.

The trouble came when it was someone you cared about who was hurt. Then things got..complicated. You still had to remain professional but the cries, moans, groans and grimaces always got to you no matter who you were. And Claire cared about Matt. That was never in question. What was was whether or not she loved him and right now wasn't the time for her to evaluate her feelings.

"Yeah, got that, thanks," he retorted through ground teeth. He inhaled deeply, probably doing a bit of meditating to help with the pain, and then slowly let it out. "Were you able to get some sleep?"

"Uh, yeah," she replied confused. "Do you not know what time it is?"

"Can't exactly tell time," he replied, reminding her that for all his abilities, he still couldn't see.

"Right," she said, a little embarrassed that she'd forgotten. "So, uh, you think your leg wound opened up."

Getting straight down to work was always a fallback for her. Whenever things got awkward or she was lonely or thinking about things she didn't want to think about, Claire always went to work. In a city like Hell's Kitchen, it was especially helpful because there always seemed to be an emergency happening in one form or another. And the times when she wasn't needed at the hospital, generally that was when Matt showed up, bleeding and needing help.

While on that note, she got up and went over to the other side of the bed. The room was unnaturally tidy and it made her think that when Foggy had gone to "straighten up" the night before, it had not only been after the incident with Matt but in general so that she wouldn't notice things he didn't want her seeing. She sat down near his left knee and began to unwrap the gauze so she could take a look.

"Yep, you reopened it," she said as she spread the cut apart and noticed that the thread spread with it. "I'm gonna have to redo it and you used the last of my local anesthesia last night so, this is gonna hurt."

He winced as he forced his body to sit upright. Then, cradling his left arm in his lap, he looked vaguely in her direction, a small smile on his face. "I'm a big boy," he said. "I can handle it."

"I know," she said as she threaded the needle. She looked up at him and smiled, even though he couldn't, technically, see it. "The medicine is for me, so I don't have to listen to you."

She had meant it to sound like a joke, not a rebuke, but she had also fully meant it. She already knew that she was hurting him; she didn't also need to hear just how much.

He chuckled, letting her know that he didn't take offense and had caught on to her teasing tone. His breath instantly caught in his throat as she inserted the needle and began to re-stitch the wound shut.

"Ah!" he cried out. The muscles in his leg jumped as the pain registered and his body prepared to run away from it.

Since she was finished with the initial stitch, she used her free hand to hold his leg still while the other one continued to sew. "Hold still," she lectured. "You don't want me to accidentally stab you, do you?"

"Because you aren't already stabbing me," he countered with a smirk on his face. It quickly changed into an expression of pain as she did the last stitch. "Ah," he said, his breath hitching again. "Aow."

"Sorry," she said, wincing. "On the plus side, I'm done."

"That didn't take very long."

Claire raised one eyebrow in surprise. "The wound wasn't that wide," she said. "I'm surprised you didn't know that already."

"Yeah well, you bound it pretty well this time so I couldn't feel it."

She placed the pad over the wound and then wrapped fresh gauze around the thigh in general. Even though it wasn't how it would normally happen, she was treating the deeper wound, the torn muscle, as she would have if someone had simply pulled a muscle. Which was why she wasn't simply placing a band-aid patch over the wound and leaving it be. And besides, anything that can keep Matt Murdock from disturbing it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, either.

"Am I supposed to apologize for that?" she asked as she finished up.

Giving his knee a pat to let him know that she was finished, Claire got up and discarded all the trash. She grabbed a glass of water while she was in the kitchen and then fished around in her bag, which she'd left by the couch, for some aspirin.

Just as she was about to go back to the bedroom, someone knocked on the door and she stopped, frozen in indecision. Since it wasn't her apartment, she felt uncomfortable answering the door as though she owned the place. Maybe if she ignored it and was really quiet whoever it was would go away?

A second knock sounded through the apartment, followed by a female voice. "Matt?"

Okay, this was awkward. Now what did she do?

Another knock came not long after the second and the woman called again, "Matt? Are you in there?"

Claire went into the bedroom, placing the water and aspirin on the bedside table. "What do you want me to do?" she asked in a whisper in case Matt didn't want the woman knowing they were there.

Matt licked his lips before answering, showing that he actually had to think about the answer before he spoke it. "Go ahead and let her in," he said sounding resigned. "C-can you help me to the couch first? I'm not sure Foggy wants her to see his bedroom."

"Well Foggy will have to deal with it," Claire argued back, this time not bothering to hide the fact that there were people inside. "Because you aren't moving anywhere. Not after I just stitched you up for the second time. No way."

"Fine, can you at least hand me the pants?"

Wow. Okay. When had that happened? Had he always been without pants and she just hadn't noticed? That was..unsettling.

After taking a moment to reel from that realization, Claire looked around for the sweatpants that Foggy had given her last night. She found them, lazily discarded on the side of the bed closest to the door and she guessed that Matt had shimmied them off before falling asleep.

With a sigh she tossed the pants at him, rolling her eyes when he caught them easily, and then went to open the door. The woman was about to knock again by the time she'd gotten to it; her hand was still in the air as the door swung inward to let her in.

"Oh, um, do I have the wrong apartment?" she asked, looking around as though to make sure her information was correct.

She was pretty, Claire noted. Blond haired and blue eyed with peaches and cream colored skin and enough shape to her for her to manage looking thin without being sickly. Her outfit was cute but professional and her shoes were gorgeous, though uncomfortable for someone who was on their feet all day. Claire also had the feeling that she'd seen the woman before and it didn't take her long to remember that she had been in the hospital with Foggy the night of the bombings.

"Uh, no, sorry," Claire said, forgetting herself for a minute. She stepped back so that the woman could come in and added, "Matt's in the bedroom." She then held out her hand to introduce herself. "I'm Claire."

"Karen," the other woman returned, giving her hand a shake and then releasing her. "I work for Matt and Foggy."

Ah, so that explained why she was here looking for Matt. Well, at least Claire didn't feel so out of place now. "That must be an interesting experience," she said as they both went to the bedroom and entered.

Matt was pretty much in the same position as before except with pants on and more upright. His left arm lay in his lap, encircled in his right, and his legs were together, though next to one another. Claire frowned a little when she noticed small signs of pain he was showing but whether or not the other woman had seen them as well, she couldn't tell.

"It has it's moments," the woman, Karen, answered with a bit of a smile. She tucked her hair behind her ear and then focused solely on Matt. There was no mistaking the look that was now on her face. If they weren't in a relationship now, they had been at one point in time.

Claire strangled that feeling of jealousy, reminding herself that she had turned Matt down before they'd had a chance to explore what they could be like together. Now while she was positive Karen didn't know the true Matt, Claire was still jealous of the fact that Karen had seen a side of Matt that Claire would never see - the boyfriend/lover side.

And on that note - she really needed to leave.

"Well," she said, hating herself for how awkward it sounded. "Now that you're all taken care of, I'm gonna go. Call me if you need anything else and please, for the love of God and my sanity, stay off your leg."

Matt chuckled at her comment, his cheeks reddening a little, and nodded. "No promises," he said and she knew he meant it.

"Okay, well fair warning - if I have to come and stitch you up again, you aren't going to like it."

"Because I enjoyed it so much the first two times," he countered.

"Yeah, well," she said, unable to come up with a suitable response. She stepped forward and gave him a kiss on the forehead, whispering, "Take care of yourself. Please?"

"I'll try," he whispered back. "And I promise to not rip my stitches again."

Figuring that was as good as she was going to get, Claire accepted it. She gave Karen a smile, saying, "It was nice to meet you," before she went into the living room, gathered her things and made as quick of an exit as she could.

Jealousy was an ugly thing. But it was even worse when she didn't have a right to it.

**TBC**


	3. Chapter Three

Karen watched the other woman, Claire, leave with curiosity and jealousy as well as a vague sense of recognition. She couldn't remember where she'd seen her before but she knew that she had, in fact, seen her somewhere. When she turned her head to look once again at Matt, her brows were furrowed in confusion, which she knew he couldn't see.

"She seems nice. Who was she?" she asked, hoping that her other feelings towards the woman hadn't come through in her question.

He smiled and it was then that she noticed that he didn't have his glasses on and so she could see his eyes. His eyes were beautiful and she always felt like it had been a loss whenever he hid them from her. At the same time, however, they were also somewhat dead; void of any form of expression. Since he couldn't see, Matt hadn't needed to use them to express how he was feeling or what he was thinking for quite some time. Generally, Karen knew, it unnerved people to notice how he didn't look at them or have any form of feeling in his eyes, which was why he wore the glasses whenever anyone was around.

Except for Foggy, she remembered. There had been many times in which he and Foggy had been in one office or another, perusing through paperwork and he hadn't been wearing the glasses. But then she would come in and on they would go. She'd tried telling him (while they'd been together) that he hadn't needed to do that with her but to no avail. He'd claimed that it had made him more comfortable and left it at that.

"Her name is Claire," he answered, using his right hand to point in the vague direction in which the front door was. Something in his tone told her that he knew that she already knew that. As he fumbled for, eventually found, and put on his glasses he added, "You've met her actually - the night of the explosions, she's the one who looked after Mrs. Cardenas."

That was right. Now she remembered. She had been a bit busy that night, what with explosions going off throughout the city, Mrs. Cardenas being hurt, and then finding out that Foggy had been hurt as well as worrying about Matt whom no one could find, and so it didn't surprise her that she didn't remember the woman all that well.

"How are you feeling?" she asked as she continued to awkwardly stand in the doorway.

"I'm alright," he answered. "A little tired."

And he looked it, Karen realized. His smiles, whenever they were offered, were less bright than they normally were. His right hand, when not being used, was in an almost constant fist, as though he were in pain and were trying not to show it. Now that she looked, his jaw was also clenched when he wasn't speaking and oh, how Karen wished that she could do something to ease his pain.

Choosing not to take the hint, Karen asked, "So, what happened?"

"Didn't Foggy tell you?" he answered. As his face remained expressionless, she couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling and she hated it. He seemed to be a little angry with her but maybe that was simply just him being tired and in pain.

"Uh, no," she answered as she nervously shifted. She wanted to sit down but doing so on the bed felt a little too intimate for where they were at right now. Karen felt such a distance between them that it physically hurt her. She wasn't sure for the reason for it, but it was there and she didn't know how to cross the great divide. "No, he, uh, had the new client, Mr. Alfano, to contend with. He actually seemed a little preoccupied. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Matt cocked his head to the side. He looked like he was listening for something but she couldn't tell what. His silence seemed to fill the distance between them until there was nothing but that. Just when it seemed like he wasn't ever going to answer her, he finally spoke.

"I'm assuming he was busy focusing on the new case. What else would he have to be preoccupied about?"

There was a certain something in his voice that suggested that he wasn't appreciating her gentle but definite interrogation. His statement was said in such a way that it had actually made her feel foolish for asking such a stupid question. Of course Foggy would be engrossed by the case. But then his slight challenge in the question made her suspicions rise ever so slightly.

"Well, you are here, in his bed, and evidently needing stitches. You don't think that's enough for him to be distracted by?"

"What? Me being in his bed or me needing stitches?" he countered. His voice pitched in a way that suggested he was teasing but Karen still felt the need to answer him as though he were being serious.

"The fact that you're hurt," she answered. "Look, I know that you aren't a big fan of displays of concern or affection but the fact of the matter is that both Foggy and I do love you and because of that, we also worry about you. Are you telling me that if it was Foggy or me in that bed instead of you, you wouldn't be concerned or wanting answers?"

In response, Matt simply swallowed, looking like the thought of their positions being reversed made him physically ill.

Unable to stand the distance anymore, Karen crossed the room, sat on the bed, and took his fisted right hand into hers. "I'm not asking you to spill all of your secrets, Matt. I'm just asking that you trust me enough not to lie to me, either."

"Yeah, okay," he said, his voice hoarse as though he were trying to stop tears from spilling. Since he still had his glasses on, however, she couldn't tell if this was true or not. "That I can do."

The hand within hers unclenched a little and she moved her grip so that she could slip her fingers into his slightly open palm, hooking onto his. He gave her hand a squeeze.

"So what happened?" she asked. "How badly are you hurt? I don't see any visible bruises or stitches unlike last time so that's got to be a good sign."

"Yeah, I definitely feel a lot better than last time. I'm just a little more immobile." He paused, took a deep breath, and then said, "I was attacked by two different people."

"Oh m'god," she whispered. She had never been able to understand how one person could intentionally hurt another person, but ever since getting to know Matt and Foggy, she found it even harder to comprehend how anyone could want to hurt them. So the fact that two different people could attack Matt was simply refusing to register within her rational mind. "How badly were you hurt?"

"I was stabbed in the leg with a small knife, which is where the stitches are, and hit with a baseball bat," he answered, swallowing once he was finished.

Karen picked up on something in his voice that practically begged her not to ask how he had escaped and so she didn't. After all, she had asked him not to lie to her and she had the feeling that he hadn't but if she were to ask any harder questions, he may just have to and she wasn't going to put him in that position.

As he explained, her eyes had tracked the parts of his body in which he referred. His left wrist, which had a compression bandage around it, was the easiest injury to find but since he hadn't explained in which leg he had been stabbed, she'd tried not to dwell too much on that one. It felt awkward to stare at his legs. Like she was somehow staring at other places instead.

"Did you go to the hospital?" she asked

"One of the benefits of having a nurse for a friend, you don't have to go to the hospital for little things."

"'Little things'", she quoted disbelievingly. "You think that getting stabbed with a knife and hit with a bat as little things?"

"Compared to the last time you saw me, wouldn't you?" he returned with a small smile.

That was true enough but she couldn't discount his injuries just yet. The trouble was that she didn't know how to express that without sounding either redundant or too mothering. So, she chose to content herself with using what she'd already observed coupled with what he'd told her. From what she could tell, he was hurting but, eventually, he'll be fine.

Gathering her willpower, Karen released his hand, making sure that she gave it a squeeze before she did so. "Well, I should get back to work. Do you need anything before I go?" Her eyes wandered the room, trying to find items that she could use to make him more comfortable. When she caught sight of the medicine and water on the bedside table, she said, "It looks like Claire left you something."

"I know," he said, though he didn't elaborate on how he knew that and she didn't ask. "I'll take it later."

"Why don't you take it now?" she suggested as she gathered up the medicine. She pulled on his hand and opened the palm then dropped the aspirin into it. "Please?"

With a sigh, he gave in, though he looked unhappy to be doing it. With an almost sullen look, he popped the pills into his mouth and then held his hand out for the water that she now had in her hand. She put it into his and then watched as he used it to help swallow the medicine.

"Alright, I'll leave you alone now," she promised, though she only meant for the day. "I'll, uh, I'll come back tomorrow to check on you, if that's okay?"

"Thank you, Karen," he said without actually answering her question. She assumed that that meant that he was okay with it, even if he didn't say it. "Thanks for coming by. I appreciate it."

Karen somehow doubted that he did but she wasn't going to argue with him. She wanted to leave things on a positive note and this seemed about as positive as things were going to get for now.

"You're welcome," she said. She leaned down and gave him a kiss on the forehead, almost identical to how Claire had done it. As she began to walk out, a thought occurred to her and she stopped to voice it. "No matter what's going on with us, Matt, I do care about you."

"I know," he quietly said. "And I, you."

She smiled, appreciating the sentiment. "Take care of yourself, Matt. I'm sure Foggy wouldn't like to come home and find you passed out on his floor."

Matt laughed, the sound warm as though she had touched on a private joke. "No. I'm sure he wouldn't."

She briefly thought about asking what he meant but she chose to leave it alone. She checked the time to see how much more she had left before she had to go back to the office and upon seeing that she still had about an hour, she chose to grab some good food rather than just takeout. Deciding that it would appreciated if she did the same for Foggy, she headed towards his favorite sushi place.

Today felt like the kind of day where they could both use some comfort food.

* * *

 

Foggy's head hurt. It wasn't one of those gentle thud behind the eyes types of headaches either. It was one of those where he just wanted to go home, crawl in bed and lay in the dark until it goes away types. As it was, he settled for sitting in the uncomfortable chair in his dark office with his head laid back, his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest. Like this, it still pounded but it wasn't as badly.

Then the door opened and he groaned with hearing it. Oh joy, Karen was back. Normally he would have loved to be alone with her in the office. It was one of the few times that he felt like there could be something there beyond friendship. But right now he just wanted to be alone.

"Foggy?" she called as she laid her keys on her desk. He groaned again as her voice pierced through his head and directly into his brain. It sent a deep throb of pain through his skull and his his brows furrowed as it registered on his face.

He heard her come into his office but he didn't open his eyes. That would only incite more pain and he didn't want to be grumpy with her for it.

"Hey," she said, her voice gentling and becoming quieter, "you okay?"

"Mm," he said by way of answer. "Headache."

"Do you need me to get you something for it?"

"No, thanks, I'll be okay," he answered. "Just need to sit here in the quiet."

She didn't respond, evidently choosing to abide by his need for quiet, and left. He soon heard her come back and his brows furrowed in confusion.

Shocking cold laid itself on his forehead and he jumped at the feel of it. He soon settled back as the iciness began to feel really good and his sigh of relief echoed through the sparsely furnished space. If his head was still hurting, he no longer felt it.

"Thank you," he said on another sigh.

"Maybe you should go home," she suggested as she pressed down on the cold cloth. Once it began to get warm, she flipped it over so that he could feel the chill again.

"I can't. I have a feeling my bed is currently occupied at the moment and I'd rather not kick them out of it yet." Confusion etched itself on his face as the cloth was taken away but it soon left as the cold once again returned.

"It is," she said and Foggy felt his heart skip a beat. Had she been to see Matt without even asking if she could go to his, Foggy's, apartment? As though to apologize for any wrong she may have committed, Karen began to gently work at the muscles around his neck. Pain had immediately greeted him then but she kept up her ministrations and soon the massage began to feel good and the pounding in his head seemed to lessen. "I went to see him on my break."

"And did he tell you what happened?" His words were mumbled as the combination of the cold and the massage soothed his pain and Foggy felt a little tiredness begin to sweep over him. Evidently late nights combined with shots of adrenaline and an injured Matt didn't agree with him. Yet he had no troubles with staying up all nigh, drinking with Karen - go figure.

"He told me that he'd been attacked by, um, by two different people," she said, though her inflection made it sound more like a question than a statement. "He said that he'd been stabbed and hit with a bat."

"An accurate summary," he assented as he stubbornly refused to acknowledge the guilt which had rolled through his stomach again. To cover up for any emotion that he didn't want to feel, Foggy put on an air of calm indifference and said, almost dismissively, "He'll be fine."

"Yeah, I kinda caught that." He heard her swallow and Foggy smirked as he now realized how Matt felt most of the time. Great, now he really was "blind Matt Murdock"; or at the very least, he was acting like him. "Claire was there when I got there."

Foggy snorted. "Idiot must've reopened the stitches on his leg." He paused as a note of concern beat through his heart. "Did he seem like he was in a lot of pain when you arrived?"

"Actually, yeah. He kept his right hand in a fist almost the entire time I was there."

Foggy sighed nodded. "She probably didn't have any anesthetic to use while she'd restitched him."

Which meant the Foggy really didn't feel comfortable banishing the guy to his couch. His leg was probably killing him right now and since Matt evidently didn't find Foggy's couch comfortable, it just seemed cruel to cause him more pain by kicking him out of the bed.

"Poor guy," she sympathized.

That was Foggy's sentiment precisely but he didn't voice it. No doubt Karen already knew how he felt about it. Another vicious throb went through his skill and Foggy groaned from it. His left hand reached up to massage his temples in the hope that that would help but when it didn't, he stopped, leaving his hand there to cover his eyes.

"You should go home," she said with concern in her voice. She withdrew her hands from his neck and moved them to his temples as she added, "Mr. Alfano was our only appointment today and I can stay just in case anyone else comes by."

"That's true," he agreed. The problem was that he didn't necessarily want to go home. Home was where Matt was; where guilt was and that was not something that he needed at the moment. He couldn't explain that all to Karen, of course, because then he'd have to try and come up with a reason why Matt had broken into Foggy's apartment rather than simply knocking on the front door and Foggy was simply not up for trying to come up with a lie right now. He cracked an eye open and looked at her. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to help me move Matt from my bed, would you?"

She laughed, stopping when he gave a wince and then nodded. "I can certainly try, but somehow I think he might be more receptive if you asked him."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Foggy sighed again as the pain once again receded. With her doing that, he didn't necessarily feel the need to go home, honestly. "Don't suppose I could hire you to do that all day rather than work, could I?"

She laughed again and this time when she stopped the massage, she didn't restart it. "As happy as I am to hear that it felt good and that it helped, I really think you should go home and get some rest because clearly you didn't get enough of it last night."

That was certainly true but he wasn't going to complain about it either.

"I suppose you're right," he relented as he prepared to get up. "Not sure how much sleep I'll get with Matt there, but it certainly couldn't hurt to try, I suppose."

Karen, who had moved into the reception area and now sat behind her desk nodded in approval. "Go get some rest," she gently commanded. "I'll call you if I need something. Just make sure you pick up."

"For you, always," Foggy promised, fully meaning it.

Some of his meaning must have gotten through because Karen's head snapped up and there was an odd expression on her face. It was like something had clicked inside her brain and she was just now seeing something she hadn't seen before. Foggy couldn't tell if she got pleasure from whatever it was but he hoped she did since it no doubt included him.

"Feel better, Foggy," she said in an almost breathy voice. "And tell Matt to take it easy on you or he'll have me to contend with."

Foggy snorted but saluted. "Will do," he answered before he trudged out of the office and into the crisp fall air. He almost wondered what she would do if she found out that he was responsible for half of Matt's injuries. But then his imagination kept coming up with things he didn't want to think about and so he stopped. In such cases as these, ignorance was always more preferable to knowledge.

* * *

 

Matt bolted upright, starting out of the dream that had held him trapped for so many years. Although many assumed that he wasn't as bothered that he was blind, that wasn't necessarily the case. The day of the accident had haunted him every night for months. As he'd gotten older it had tapered down to once every week until it was maybe once every other month. And during college it had rarely happened at all. However, as it also happened more often if he was feeling vulnerable, Matt had been experiencing the nightmare more and more during this past year and he was having trouble shaking it from his memory with every time he woke.

His chest heaved as his heart raced as his mind kept replaying that day over and over until everything became the blur of reds and yellows that it was to this day. A stinging sensation in his eyes had him hissing through his teeth and Matt closed them in hopes of coaxing the pain to go away. It was only a phantom pain, really, though he still had his eyes, but he could feel it as though he were currently lying in the street as the chemicals burned away his vision.

Collapsing back on the bed, Matt continued to lay there until his breathing and heart finally slowed and the discomfort in his eyes was a burn that he could handle. The pain would fade sooner or later and so he refused to pay it any attention. The sunlight that Matt could feel shining in Foggy's bedroom burned brightly for this time of year but it was a welcome heat and Matt simply lay there for a moment and soaked it in.

He indulged in that for another minute or two and then, deciding that it would be polite of him to change the now sweat-soaked sheets, got up to do just that. From the second he'd put weight on his wrist, the deep throb of a hairline fracture greeted him and it had him grimacing and retracting the arm so that only his right supported him. After giving the pain another second to calm, Matt slowly pushed himself upright, trying to put as little pressure as possible on his left arm while still using it.

Once that was accomplished, he felt around the wound on his leg to see if he could gauge how much weight it might tolerate. The answering pain told him that he might just be best not doing anything but he couldn't do that. After all that Matt had put Foggy through this past six months, he couldn't add being a burden to the list as well. Not when he could do some small things. Sure, it would hurt, a lot, but on some level Matt felt as though he deserved the pain.

He could still recall with certain clarity the tears and betrayal in Foggy's voice the day he'd found out who Matt truly was. It had hurt when his best friend had accused him of faking being blind but the real dagger to the heart had been when Foggy had truly believed that Matt could have blown up part of the city and killed innocent people. It was then that Matt had realized how deep his betrayal had gone for Foggy and just how much trust had been broken. Try as he might, Matt hadn't been able to stop the tear from rolling down his face as he'd answered Foggy's question. The knowledge of just how badly Matt had fucked things up between the two of them had simply hurt too much for him to hide.

Trusting that action could help him push away the guilt from that day, Matt slowly stood and tested just how much this was going to hurt. The pain wasn't debilitating but it wasn't easy not to react to, either. His steps were uneven as his tried to put only a little bit of weight on the leg with every step he took, and his limp was very heavy but at least he was mobile. He followed his nose to nowhere he could smell clean linens and grabbed what he hoped was a matching set of sheets and then made his way back to the bed.

It turned out that stripping the bed was no easy task when you only had one good arm and leg. Not only was Matt's balance off but his dexterity was also compromised. Still, he was nothing if not stubborn and while it may have taken him three times as long as it normally would have done, he got it finished.

He had barely finished putting the dirty sheets into the hamper (which, by the way had not been a pleasant thing to find when using one's sense of smell) when he heard the creak of the door handle followed by the latch releasing. The smell which Matt had come to equate with Foggy greeted his nose, telling him that he had come back. Matt frowned when he heard the church bells four blocks down chime two o'clock. Foggy never left the office early unless something was wrong.

Focusing his hearing, Matt tuned into Foggy's heartbeat, his own calming slightly when he discovered it to be in a normal rhythm. There was a slight flutter to it but nothing indicative of a serious injury or something the like. There was a creaking sound in Foggy's neck which only someone with freakishly good hearing would pick up on and it told Matt why Foggy had returned. He had a tension headache and chances were good that Karen had sent him home.

Foggy's heart rate increased significantly as Matt made his way into the living room. "Geez!" he cursed, evidently surprised that Matt was up and moving. "Warn a guy before you suddenly appear!"

"Sorry," Matt apologized though all he'd done was walk, well limp, into the room. He'd thought about making a joke in reference to another bat attack but he refrained, knowing that Foggy felt badly enough about it. "You should go lie down," he said instead, nodding his head in Foggy's direction.

"So should you," Foggy returned as he set down his things and took off his coat. "Why are you up anyways? Weren't you told to stay off the leg?"

"Yeah but I figured that you wouldn't appreciate trying to nap in bed with me, so I got up."

Compressed, climate-controlled air released into the room and the sound of random jars and bottle clanking against one another said that Foggy had opened the refrigerator and the sound of a seal releasing told Matt that he had opened a bottle of water, probably to take some ibuprofen.

"Well since you don't seem to like my couch, I'm not sure that there's much of a choice," was Foggy's reply after he had taken a few gulps. His tone wasn't resentful, exactly, but it wasn't his normal, teasing one either. He must be hurting pretty badly for him to become that grumpy. Matt didn't blame him, pain had a way of turning even the gentlest guy into a viper. "Come on, back to bed for both of us."

"I'll be fine on the couch, Foggy," Matt declined. If all else fails, he could always move to the loveseat that he'd damn near tripped over earlier. It wasn't like he was exactly tired anyways. "Just go get some rest." Matt heard Foggy's mouth open like he was planning on arguing and he did his best to forestall it. "I promise that if I truly need to, I'll get into the bed. Happy?"

"Well not when you phrase it like that, I'm not."

Matt just chuckled. "Goodnight Foggy," he said as he gingerly lowered himself onto the couch.

A swish of air told Matt that Foggy had waved his response rather than spoken it and that was fine with him. He listened as Foggy's breathing slowly became more even, more deep, letting the familiar thump of Foggy's heart throw him back to another time when Matt had kept watch while Foggy had slept..

* * *

 

_The hospital was abuzz with activity. Everywhere there was something going on and Matt calmly listened to it all, focusing his attention on the distraction it presented rather than the pain he could feel in his body as Claire examined him. The second bed in Foggy's room had recently been vacated and the nurse had taken the soonest opportunity to get Matt onto it so she could "take a look" at him while he kept a close (and figurative) eye on his injured friend. In the other bed, Foggy's breathing was slow and his heart was beating steadily, assuring Matt that he was both sleeping and not feeling any pain._

_Matt, on the other hand, was. While his adrenaline had been running, he hadn't felt the numerous bruises which littered his torso, back, and arms. The worst of them were the ones on his torso, where the Russian had fallen onto him. Once he had regained consciousness, Matt had known that at least one rib was broken, but then he'd heard Vladimir's name and all thought of injury had been replaced by anger, determination, and rage. He'd been reminded of the injury when the Russian had attacked him while they'd been hiding out in the warehouse._

_He had fully intended on going home and resting but then his phone had chirped at him, telling him he had several messages. Matt had planned on ignoring them as they were from Karen but the more he'd idly listened the more concerned he became. He actually heard his own heart speed up when he'd listened to the message saying that Foggy had taken a shard of glass in his side and was going to be staying at the hospital overnight for observation. Matt had begun moving before the message had ended. He'd just barely finished getting dressed in street clothes when Foggy's voicemail had played._

_Although his friend had tried to hide it under a veil of concern, Matt had had no trouble hearing the fear and pain in his voice and it had broken his heart. Right then, Foggy had been no more than a kid who needed his friend and Matt hadn't been there for him, He'd let Foggy down. And Matt hated himself for it._

_"Ahh-ow," Matt groaned deep in his throat. Claire had found the worst of the bruising over his left side and had pressed on it. The burning pain had caught him off guard and as a result he hadn't been able to stifle his reaction to it._

_The heart monitor attached to Foggy jumped in response and Matt found himself wincing from the high pitch of it. He heard Foggy's heart rate and breathing increase, showing that he was waking up and that he was anxious. "Matt?" he mumbled, sounding confused and, well, foggy._

_"Yeah, I'm here." Matt would have gotten off the bed and gone over to his friend if it hadn't been for Claire stopping him. He could smell her standing in front of him and feel the heat from her hand as it hovered above his broken rib, evidently threatening him with more pain if he even tried to. "I'm sorry I'm late."_

_"Where were you, buddy?" Foggy asked, his voice coming off sounding like a child's rather than his own. Foggy was still feeling vulnerable, evidently, and he wasn't bothering to hide it. Matt suspected that it was because Karen (who had gone home not long after Matt had arrived) wasn't around, but since he wasn't sure if Foggy actually realized that fact, he couldn't prove it "We were worried."_

_"I know, and I'm sorry," Matt apologized, once again feeling horrible for not having been there when he'd been needed. "I was on my way to Mrs. Cardenas' when the bombs blew. A guy managed to block me from the flames but the force of it threw him on me." He paused, taking a breath, his heart breaking that he was, essentially, lying to his friend but he didn't want Foggy to be put in harm's way because he knew the truth. Grimacing as the pain renewed itself, Matt continued, "By the time I woke up, I had several voicemails from you and Karen. I got here as soon as I could but, it wasn't soon enough."_

_"A guy smothered you?" Foggy asked sounding a little drunk. His heart had eventually slowed which told Matt that Foggy had only been anxious because he hadn't been sure what had woken him and now that he was talking to his friend, all was well. That was until the repercussions of a guy heavily landing on Matt began to register with him and then his heart rate increased again. "You okay? You hurt?"_

_"I'm fine, Foggy," he lied, hoping that Claire went along with it. When he heard her sigh but say nothing, he assumed that she had silently agreed not to call him on it and he was grateful. He mouthed a 'thank you' which he heard her nod back a 'you're welcome'. "Go back to sleep, Foggy. I'll still be here when you wake up."_

_"Mm," Foggy seemed to consent. His head lolled to his left and his breathing began to deepen again. Matt heard him start and roll his head in the direction of Matt's voice and ask, "Where's Karen?"_

_"She went home awhile ago, Foggy," Matt assured. "Just get some sleep. It's my shift now and I won't let anything happen to you."_

_The last bit had been a promise that Matt had fully intended to keep, even if he had to die to do it. He knew that Foggy would probably not remember it and he was okay with that as the implications in it were numerous. However Matt felt as though he owed it to Foggy to do anything in his power to keep him safe, after failing to be there for him earlier and so he'd said it anyways._

_"Sounds good," Foggy said, proving how not coherent he was. Snoring was the next sound that came from him and it made Matt smile._

_"You know that you can't always protect them, right?" Claire said once Foggy had fallen asleep._

_Not missing the how she also referred to Karen as well as Foggy, Matt said, "I know." He winced as she began to tape his injured ribs but he did his best to swallow any sound of pain so as to not wake his friend again. "But that doesn't mean I won't try."_

_"Yeah, and I get that." Her voice was slightly muffled since she wasn't facing him but Matt still heard it as though she'd yelled it. "Just like I know that you'll probably get yourself killed while doing it. And then what good will that do?"_

_"At least they'll be safe."_

_"Yeah," she conceded, cutting the tape and finishing up. "Until the next threat comes."_

_"I'm not naive, Claire, I know that I won't be able to protect them from everything. But I can protect them from Fisk."_

_She helped him get his shirt back on and his face froze into a permanent look of pain during the process. His shoulders held their own bruises and raising his arms to slip them into the shirt had aggravated more than his side. With a twitch of facial muscles and a silent inhale through teeth, Matt heard her wince and he tried to smile at her in reassurance._

_"Stay here while I go get you some ice," she ordered, moving past their previous conversation and starting a new one. "You can move to the chair beside Foggy's bed if you want but I can tell you right now, it will not be comfortable with your broken ribs."_

_"I'll be fine," he said as he gingerly leveraged himself off the bed and into the chair._

_"Yeah, I thought you'd say that." Claire sounded resigned as well as a little disappointed but what she was upset about, he couldn't figure out._

_Truth be told, he didn't want to know at the moment because as far as he was concerned, they'd worked out what they were to one another before he'd left earlier in the evening. And besides, he was there for Foggy, not Claire._

_She left without another word and Matt let her go. His blank stare focused on Foggy's prone form in the bed and there it remained until the morning when Foggy woke more coherent and completely oblivious to anything that had happened while he'd been sleeping._

**TBC**


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> I'm sorry to say that I believe this to be the end of this fic. I hope that you enjoy it, however short the chapter is, and that you aren't too let down by the ending. Thank you for reading it!

By the time Foggy awoke, his room was pitch dark. The first thing he noticed was that his head didn't hurt as much as it had before he'd taken the nap. The second was that these weren't the same sheets he'd had on his bed when he'd left this morning which meant that Matt must have changed them. How Matt had changed them, given his injuries, Foggy had no idea but the fact remained that he had.

Rolling over in bed, Foggy simply lay there for a moment, letting the dark envelop him in its embrace. He tried to hear if Matt was awake or doing something out in the living room but he could hear nothing save the normal sounds of New York at night and his own breathing. He was actually half tempted to hide out in his room but that was a bit cowardly and Foggy shied away from the mere thought of it. To be fair, Foggy wasn't intentionally trying to avoid his best friend. He was simply trying to avoid the sense of guilt he felt every time he looked at the man's injured wrist.

The night that Foggy had found out about Matt's extracurricular activities had been one of the worst nights in his life. He literally could not remember a worse one. A mixture of emotions had swirled through his veins, mixing with his blood to create a poison; a poison which had made him spout foul things at his friend that Foggy now regretted ever having said. Still, at the time, he supposed, they had seemed fair and rational and Matt had accepted each comment, each threat, each question without complaint. He had simply answered what needed to be answered, admitted what needed to be admitted, and corrected what needed to be corrected. Not without how he had felt about doing it all showing in his face, mind you, but he had done it.

Now, as he lay in the dark with nothing but his mind for company, Foggy remembered a few specific times during that day, or night, or whatever it was that seemed to have stuck with him the most, and most of them had involved Matt crying. But then, Foggy had been tearing up too; he'd just managed to leave before any tears had actually fallen. The third memory was when Foggy had threatened to kick the shit out of Matt, who had admitted that Foggy meant it in so calm a manner that Foggy wondered if Matt would have simply just taken the punishment without trying to defend himself.

Thankfully the feeling to cause any harm to the blind man had long since passed and in its wake was a desire not to cause Matt any more pain than he was already in. The criminals of New York City were doing a good enough job of that without Foggy needing to add to the mix.

In fact, Foggy now spent a good portion of his nights worrying about Matt. This was nothing new, of course, as he'd always worried about Matt but the degree with which he did it now had changed. Instead of worrying about something small or seemingly insignificant happening, Foggy now worried that he'd go over to Matt's apartment and find him either bleeding and/or broken, or dead. Like he had the night that Matt had admitted everything.

Foggy shivered, thinking about the condition Matt had been in when he'd found him. He buried further into the blankets though he knew that it wouldn't change the chill he felt. This wasn't from the cold outside, which had begun to settle onto New York like a storm cloud that was here to stay. This was the chill of death that had rubbed a little too closely for comfort and no matter what Foggy did, he knew that he would never dispel it; not when he thought about Matt, that was.

After he had gotten over the shock of discovering that his best friend was the man in the black mask, Foggy had re-dialed 911. The phone ringing had distracted him from the fist that was heading his way and he only barely managed to duck it. It was then that Matt had told him about who he was really talking to on the burner phone and had demanded (which, by the way was way too delicate a word as it was nye on threatening) that Foggy call the nurse rather than the ambulance. Foggy had, naturally, fought against the idea but the fact of the matter was that he was still too shocked to truly put up too much of a fight and had eventually given in.

Matt had passed out shortly after that and while Foggy was grateful for that, he had also been nervous, expecting that his friend was going to die right in front of him. The nurse, Claire, had told him to find the worst of the injuries and do what he could to help and in so doing, Foggy had spent a good portion of the wait holding a the crumpled up mask against the deep cut in Matt's side. It hadn't taken long for the blood to soak through the cloth and spill over to his hands and it was then that Foggy had started panicking. The sight of Matt's blood on his hands had just been too much for him to handle then. But whereas others would have started hyperventilating or, heck even screaming, Foggy had just simply cried. His heart had been racing ever since he'd broken into Matt's apartment and his breathing had begun to catch up to the rhythm, leaving him breathless by the time Claire had arrived.

Once the nurse had shown up, Foggy had gratefully stepped back and gotten out of the way. She hadn't let him go far, of course, as she knew she was going to need his help but she had tried to keep him out of the process as much as possible. After Matt had been sewn together and made to look like a younger version of Frankenstein's monster, the pair had gotten Matt onto the couch, which considering they hadn't been able to do that without pressing on a bruise or cut, Foggy had been glad that the blind man had been unconscious. With that accomplished, Claire had left, telling him to have Matt call her if he needed anything and then, once again, Foggy had been left alone to deal with his thoughts and his emotions.

Now Foggy was having to do the same thing, only this time, he wasn't angry at Matt; only himself. He should have known, on some level at least, that it had been Matt who was breaking in. After all, most criminals would try to jimmy his door open rather than climb up the five levels on the fire escape and then try to break in. A lot of guys in New York were lazy which meant that they would prefer the elevator to the climb. Only Matt would prefer the climb.

Deciding that enough was enough, Foggy got out of bed. He sat on the edge for a minute, wanting to make sure that the pounding wouldn't renew itself, and then got up and opened the door.

The living room was almost as dark as his bedroom. The main exception out here was that the window blinds were open and moonlight was streaming in. It trailed over the floor, landing just beyond his couch where Foggy could make out the shape of Matt curled up into the same position that he had been earlier in the night that Foggy had walked out on him. He lay on his right side, presumably because his body had recognized the pain it would cause to lay on the other, and had his right hand under his face while his left lay flat against the cushions.

No matter how comfortable the position looked, however, Foggy knew that his friend's sleep wasn't restful. Matt's brows were furrowed like he was in pain or thinking or something and his lips kept moving, though what he was saying, Foggy couldn't hear. Evidently Matt was being tormented in his dreams and his mind hadn't yet seen the need to relieve him. But whereas Foggy was used to Matt's nightmares, this wasn't one. This was simply a dream that wouldn't let go and kept Matt locked in no matter what it did to its host.

Figuring that the light wouldn't bother his friend, Foggy turned one on so that he didn't trip over his own furniture. The sound of the lamp clicking seemed to grab Matt's attention, however, and his eyes quickly opened. In spite of the blankness within them, they stared wildly around as though trying to find some sort of point to focus on and reorient themselves with.

"Sorry," Foggy said, hoping that his voice would provide Matt with enough familiarity to calm him down. "I didn't want to wake you but not all of us are good at groping around in the dark."

Matt's answering chuckle was forced at best but Foggy left it alone. Whatever was bothering his friend would either come out or not. Normally he didn't mind pushing but he'd also learned long ago that with Matt Murdock, you didn't push because he wouldn't let you. He would tell you when he was good and ready; if he ever became good and ready, that was. Until then, there wasn't a point in trying because all you'd get was stony silence and possibly the cold shoulder for the next several hours. And that was if he was in a good mood.

"You hungry? I was thinking of making us a bit of something."

Foggy made sure to turn on more lights as he crossed the room and went into his small, pathetic excuse for a kitchen. A lot of his cupboards were empty and his refrigerator wasn't in much better shape at the moment but Foggy knew that he had enough to get by for the moment. Since he had agreed to consider the case (which, he still needed to tell Matt about), he wasn't too worried about going hungry as the client had cut them a pretty decent check as an advance with the promise of more in the amount of three times as much if they took it on and won. It wasn't anything like what Confederated Global Investments had given them but it was enough to pay the rent and utilities of the office plus the half-salary of each Matt, Foggy and Karen. Which probably meant they could each buy groceries and maybe pay a couple bills and that was it.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Foggy heard Matt say, though he didn't sound too terribly excited by the idea of food. "Whatcha got?"

"Spaghetti," Foggy yelled back as he took a peek into his refrigerator for a second time just to make sure that was their only option.

There was a quiet, barely audible groan from the couch and it drew Foggy away from his appliance and to the doorway of the kitchen so that he could look into his living room. He was just in time to see Matt stiffly get off the couch and start limping over towards him.

"You really don't like sitting still, do you?" Foggy teased when he saw just how much pain it caused his friend to do that.

Matt's head turned in the direction of Foggy's voice but he still kept walking. "Inactivity has never been my strong suit."

"Oh yeah, I remember that." Foggy turned around and went back to his kitchen, assuming that Matt would follow him. He took out the necessary pots, pans and utensils and began boiling the pasta water as well as defrosting some ground beef in the microwave. "Trying to get you to sit still was like trying to get a kid with ADD to read a book for an hour."

"Well to be fair, you were only using me to help you pick up girls," Matt countered with a smile in his voice.

"Please," Foggy scoffed, "like you weren't doing the same thing."

Foggy's apartment wasn't big by any means but it was comfortable. The table at which he rarely sat was within earshot and eye-view of the kitchen and so when he didn't receive any form of comeback from Matt, Foggy looked over his shoulder to check on him. As expected, Matt sat at the table but instead of paying attention to their conversation, he had this far and away look on his face which meant that he was thinking about something else entirely.

With a shrug, Foggy left him alone and continued to make them some dinner. Halfway through, he found that he couldn't hold his tongue any longer and said, "Okay, what's on your mind, Murdock?"

"What?" Matt said distractedly. His brows furrowed, though why Foggy had no idea, and then he said, "Nothing."

"Don't lie to me," Foggy said, not missing the wince that crossed his friend's face as he did so. Instead of dwelling on it, he continued, "I can tell when you're thinking about something and right now, you're thinking of something."

"It's nothing, Foggy, really," Matt assured, probably hoping that that would pacify Foggy enough to where he'd leave it alone. But Foggy couldn't. There was something that was tugging at him to continue and he followed it.

"Does it have to do with whatever you were dreaming about?"

Through the breakfast window, Foggy saw Matt stiffen and thought, Bullseye! He waited for Matt to say something first, though, before he pursued it further.

"What makes you say that?" Matt cautiously asked.

"When I came out of the bedroom, I could see you mumbling something and you didn't look happy about it," Foggy explained. He poured the linguine into the boiling water and gave it a good stir before he took the beef out of the microwave and dumped it into the frying pan. He made sure to add lots of garlic (something that both him and Matt agreed on when it came to any form of Italian cooking) as well as some sort of Italian spices mix and then gave that a good stir as well. "I dunno," he continued after another second's pause, "I just figured something was bothering you."

Matt laughed and this time there was no humor in it. It was sardonic at best and angry at worst. "Yeah," he said, "you could say that."

"Then what is it, man?" Foggy pushed only to hope that Matt wouldn't shut down on him.

It took what felt like forever but eventually Matt began to talk.

"I was thinking about the night of the bombings," he said quietly.

"Oh, you mean when I got stabbed with some glass and you weren't there?" Foggy spoke without thinking of how it would sound. He winced when it finally registered and he looked over in hopes that Matt hadn't taken it the wrong way. Evidently he had since he was staring at anywhere else other than Foggy's direction and the previous look of blankness was now replaced by an almost stricken expression. Hoping to show that he wasn't still upset about it, Foggy asked, "Yeah, what did really happen that night? Where were you?"

Foggy took a few minutes to blend everything together, sauce with pasta, and then he dished up a couple of bowls and placed them on the table. He went back to grab a couple bottles of water as well as a couple forks and a knife, in case they wanted to totally bastardize eating Italian and cut the pasta up, and then he rejoined Matt at the table, curious to hear the true story.

"I was across town, attempting to infiltrate one of the Russian warehouses when the bombs went off," Matt said as he pointed towards the precise area where the bombs had gone off. "I was fighting one of the guards when I heard the click and I used his body as a shield just in time to be knocked to the ground."

"Wait, so that fuzzy part I remember about you saying that you'd been smushed by a guy, that part was true?"

"Yeah, it just didn't happen quite the way I'd explained." The sardonic smirk was back and Foggy was beginning to discover just how much he hated it. It was full of self-loathing which, while Foggy could understand, wasn't necessary. "Anyways, when I'd woken up, I had planned on going home to get out of the mess but I got distracted."

"Distracted, how?" Foggy asked, suspicious.

"I had gone to that building to look for the Russian boss, a guy by the name of Vladimir. He'd had Claire kidnapped and beaten for information on me and I wanted to know why." Matt's mouth opened and Foggy could see that he was using his tongue to play with his teeth. It was something that Matt had a habit of doing when he was angry but not wanting to express it. Clearly the thought of Claire being tortured still pissed him off. "I'd also hoped to weaken Fisk's operation by taking out the Russians but, as you saw, Fisk beat me to that."

"So where were you when the standoff was happening?"

"I was stuck in the warehouse," Matt admitted and Foggy felt his heart sink. "And yes, I did take that cop hostage, but I didn't kill him, Foggy, I swear. I left him tied to a post and he was still alive when I left the building."

The pleading in Matt's voice, begging Foggy to believe him drained away any appetite Foggy had once had. Now that Foggy knew what Matt was capable of, he had no doubt that if Matt wanted someone dead, they'd be dead. But instead, you never heard of the black mask killing people until that night. Up until then, it was always rumors about criminals being beaten to a pulp and left for the cops to handle. The fact that Foggy had once actually accused the man in front of him of murdering innocents disgusted him. But he swallowed all that he was thinking and feeling for the moment. He wanted to hear the rest.

"How did you escape?"

"There were tunnels beneath the warehouse. After a very short conversation with Fisk, both Vladimir and I pulled open the grate and went down into them. My plan was for both of us to escape, but Vladimir was too badly wounded and there were too many of them. He made the choice to stay behind, to distract them so that I could get away."

"Wow, didn't see that coming," Foggy murmured, surprised.

Matt simply nodded for an answer but he didn't say anything more. There was a pause in which both men were too busy thinking of the past to do much more than sit there and breathe and then the quiet was suddenly shattered by Matt's shuddering breath.

"I'm sorry that I wasn't there earlier, Foggy," he said, his voice a tornado of barely controlled emotion.

"It's okay," Foggy easily forgave. He was a bit confused as to why this mattered so much to Matt now but he wasn't going to ask that. "It sounds like you were having one heck of a night yourself."

Matt laughed breathily, his hand distractedly going towards the fork to the right of his bowl. "Yeah, I guess you could say that I was."

"Wait," Foggy said slowly as something else caught up in his memory. "So, you really were hurt and you were just hiding it?" When Matt cocked his head to the side, silently asking how he knew that, Foggy shrugged. "I heard you cry out in pain while I was sleeping," he said, answering the unasked question. "And I seem to remember something about broken ribs but that's a bit fuzzy."

"Yeah, you were, uh, you were pretty out of it," Matt said with a smile. "But, yes, I did have a few broken ribs and a lot of bruises, but they were ignorable."

"Unlike a stab wound," Foggy said in reference to Matt's leg injury.

"Yeah, unlike that," Matt agreed with a small chuckle. "Or a fractured wrist."

Now it was Foggy's turn to wince. He had been hoping that Matt wouldn't bring that up but if wishes were horses, and all that nonsense.

"Yeah, sorry about that," he said with the wince still on his face and therefore seeping into his voice.

"It's fine, Foggy, it was my fault," Matt assured. "And, look, if it makes you feel better you can count it towards beating the crap out of me."

Yeah..Foggy was wondering when that subject would be brought up again. It had taken so long that he had actually wondered if Matt had simply let it go and not let it bother him. But judging from the false cheer that Foggy could hear in his friend's voice, he was most definitely bothered by it and, what's more, he was a little hurt by it.

"Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?" Foggy said by way of answer. He pushed his food around in his bowl, trying to think of a way to express what he was thinking but his mind and his heart were too busy warring for him to be able to concentrate.

"Yeah," Matt answered. "And I'm fairly certain that you had really wished you could do it."

"To be fair, I was a bit angry," Foggy weakly defended. "Rightfully so," he added in hopes of strengthening his argument.

Matt flinched like he'd been slapped and Foggy sighed. This hadn't been his plan, to bring up old wounds and potentially rub salt in them. He'd just wanted to know what had been on Matt's mind. That was all. Unfortunately it seemed that Matt was feeling a bit of guilt himself and he was allowing himself to wallow in it.

"Hey," Foggy said to get Matt's attention. He leaned forward, placing one arm on the table and the other on his thigh. "You know that I've forgiven you, right?"

"Yeah, I kinda caught that," Matt retorted, some of his sense of humor choosing to show itself. He smiled and though it wasn't its normal warmth, it wasn't the cold one that he'd been giving earlier, either. "The problem is that I'm having trouble forgiving myself for my mistakes."

Foggy's throat went dry. "Was tell me about your true identity a mistake?"

"Well letting you find out was," Matt said still with a smile. He soon grew serious and finished, "But no, finally being able to tell you everything is not something I regret. All those lies over the years are. I-I just wanted to keep you safe, Foggy."

"I know," Foggy granted. He didn't bother bringing up the fact that lying to him also had had a chance of putting him in danger. They both already knew this and rehashing what had already been said would get them no where. "Now, eat, Murdock. You're beginning to look like a scarecrow."

"I'm hardly beginning to look like a scarecrow, Foggy," Matt argued with a chuckle. "This is what having muscle looks like."

"Ouch!" Foggy returned, a smile of his own gracing his lips with its presence. "I'll have you know that I happen to have a lot of muscle. I just don't choose to show it off quite like you do. I'm more modest than some people I know."

"Hey-what? I'm modest? When am I not modest?"

"Have you forgotten the red and black suit that you wear to prowl the city at night?" Foggy retorted. "That's not modest. That's practically screaming, 'Hey look at me! I'm a deliciously handsome man and, bonus, I can also kick anyone's ass who comes against me.'"

"That is so not what it is saying, Foggy." Matt's reply was broken up into pieces because he was laughing in between words but Foggy had gotten the gist of it. "That suit says, protection. Protection for me and protection for the city."

"Yeah, I don't think so. I think it's just another way for you to get girls without your wingman."

"Wingman?! Foggy, you used me to pick up girls, not to help me get them."

"Well I would have helped you had you even showed an interest in any of them. But not, you let them practically fall at your feet to help you and coo over you and then you'd just smile that handsome smile of yours and then politely excuse yourself, leaving me to follow behind because it would make me look like a really bad friend if I let the blind guy walk home by himself."

At this, Matt had no reply. He was too busy trying to eat as well as laugh to make one. It was good to know that Foggy could still get Matt laughing, even when his stupid Catholic guilt refused to let him smile. Sitting around, eating and bantering about the past was as close as they had ever come to how things used to be and if Foggy had a say in it, they could only move forward from here.

After all, just because it was broken, doesn't mean it can't be remade stronger than before. Right?

 

_Fin_


End file.
